


will you lay yourself down and dig your grave?

by cosmicpoet



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Depression, F/M, M/M, Post chapter 1, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-04 01:20:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12760182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: After Kaede's death, Shuichi doesn't know how he can possibly move from his bed, never mind continue living in the killing game. Sometimes, motivation comes in the strangest of forms.





	will you lay yourself down and dig your grave?

Shuichi can’t bear to look at her hanging body, but what comes next is so much worse. The thickness of it – her blood – all over the floor, just like Rantaro’s, and he just wants someone to blame. It would be so much easier if he had someone to blame, but he can’t think of the mastermind without thinking of how his deductions had led Kaede to _this._ It’s easier just to blame himself, because it hurts, and he deserves it.

All that he remembers of his past, at this moment, is that he most definitely knows how to tie a good noose. Every slight movement of his reasoning, within his mind, leads him blindly to the conclusion that he wishes it could have been him, instead of her. Because he’s to blame. And maybe he’s jealous of her, too, being completely dead – but thinking like that just makes Shuichi hate himself even more. None of them should have died, and to trivialise Kaede’s death into his own pathetic ideation…well, it’s not something he can help, but it’s not something her memory deserves, either.

There can’t be a funeral. Killing games aren’t designed for funerals, and besides, there would be nothing to bury. Everything that Shuichi loved most is now asphyxiated and crushed between the keys of the one thing Kaede loved most. This, he reasons, is why minor keys were invented. Nothing stays happy for long.

When Kaito punches him, Shuichi wants to say ‘thank you’. He wants to say ‘do it again’. He wants to say ‘all of this, and more, please’. But he just goes red, and hides his eyes again, just like Kaede told him not to do – and he hates that letting her down comes so naturally to him.

Back in his room, he feels so heavy that he can almost cross the boundary into empathising with a dead body under a murderous weight. Not even having the energy or will to lock his door behind him, Shuichi lies motionless on his bed for an infinite forever, like he’s lying on immaterial sand, just waiting for the tide to come in. For someone so intelligent, he no longer has the ability to process his own emotions. The onslaught of guilt, of jealously, of numb depression. He wishes it were easy to compartmentalise himself into something as simple as _wanting to die –_ which he does, but regrets wanting that. Kaede gave him her wish. What use is that when he can’t get out of bed?

For about an hour, Shuichi doesn’t realise that he’s crying. He knows that something is happening, but it’s almost as if he’s having an out-of-body experience, wherein he is just staring at the ceiling trying to find her face in the paintwork. Feeling numb is so much worse than feeling sad, because sadness is something to hold onto, and there’s nothing right now that can fill the emptiness inside him. Shuichi imagines what he would do were he not trapped within this school, whether he would start smoking, or drinking, or if he would simply get in his uncle’s car and drive it straight off a cliff. Anything just to feel something in the absence of Kaede.

He runs his hand along the curves of his face, feeling the wet smoothness of his cheeks, the hard bridge of his nose, the shape of his jaw. He’s real, he’s breathing, and he can feel his own body because he’s _alive,_ and now he’s imagining what is left of Kaede. Whether any part of her could be recognisable after being crushed. The world, he thinks, can be split into _real_ and _gone,_ and the only thing he can understand right now is that he is real and she is gone, and it should be the other way around.

Why did he live, when he wants to die? Why did she die, when she deserved to live?

The world is just a vinyl player stuck on a loop, playing the same note over and over again until something once calm begins to deafen him. Nothing can save him now, not when his reason for wanting to escape this place is burned into his mind as a departed memory. His crying is audible now, like thunder drowning out raindrops, and now he’s thinking of Chopin, and now he’s thinking of her, and now he’s still crying.

Shuichi can’t hear the knocking on his door. He can’t see the door opening. When he finally does notice the light being let into his room, he lets his mind become overwhelmed with the blinding hope that somebody is here to murder him. For someone who desperately wants to die, dying itself seems like a terrible effort; it would be so much easier if someone were to come and do it for him. Kaede couldn’t have entrusted her wish to someone so weak. He swears that he isn’t real.

“Oh, Shuichi,” the singsong voice of Kokichi breaks the fragile glass bubble of the room. “Why are you crying?”

 _“Ignore him, and he’ll go away,”_ Shuichi thinks.

“You can’t be missing Kaede, right? She murdered Rantaro, after all.”

 _“Don’t rise to it,”_ he tells himself.

“Monokuma made the rules _very_ clear. But I guess we should thank her. She saved our lives, and made this game so much more fun! She wasn’t boring, was she?”

“Don’t even fucking talk about her, Kokichi.”

“Got you talking! That was my goal. I was lying, y’know. About thinking that you can’t be missing Kaede. You two were close, right?”

“Go away.”

“So it’s only natural that you’d miss her! But you can’t spend your life in your room, even you know that. This game is just getting started, and we need the Ultimate Detective on our side!”

“Go away. Please.”

“What’s that? Dearest Shuichi wants me to leave? That’s too bad, because I come bearing the gift of information!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oops, sorry, that was a lie again. I know nothing. Well, maybe I do, but I’m not about to share it and lose the game! Anyway, I’m only here because I’m bored.”

“Go bother someone else.”

Kokichi starts fake crying, and Shuichi can’t help but hate him for making a mockery of emotion. The only thing that any of them should be feeling right now is guilt for sending Kaede to her death. They’re all to blame, but Shuichi is most at fault – he led her to murder, he exposed her in the trial, and now he can’t even fulfil her wish.

“What you thinking about? Oh, let me guess! You’re thinking about Kaede, right?”

Shuichi doesn’t respond.

“Kaito said you should visit her talent lab? Why don’t you do that?”

“How do you know – never mind.”

“Oh Shuichi,” Kokichi almost sings his words, “I know _everything.”_

“Do you know how much I want you to go away?”

“Yep!”

Kokichi skips across the room and flops down next to Shuichi on the bed. He sprawls his arms out, closely missing Shuichi’s face with the back of his hand. Then, as if he has an infinite amount of energy that he has to expend, he sits up and starts readjusting the pillows behind him.

“You need to learn to hide your emotions better. Nobody wants to rely on a detective who gets paralysed by sadness after one measly murder!”

“Fuck off.”

“Ooh, feisty! I like that. I like you a lot, Shuichi. I liked Kaede too, she was fun!”

“Well, she’s dead, and you’re annoying. Leave me alone.”

“Fiiiiiine. But remember, if you don’t get your shit together, there’s gonna be another murder! We’re all relying on you to forget about Kaede!”

With that, he leaves, and Shuichi throws a pillow at the back of his head, missing the shot by an inch at most. Before he shuts the door, Kokichi turns back and flashes a smile at Shuichi, like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

And as much as Shuichi hates to admit it, Kokichi is right. Not about the whole ‘forgetting Kaede’ thing, which he is sure Kokichi only said to get him angry, but about him needing to get his shit together. That’s when he realises that there’s a lot more to Kokichi than just an annoying pest who doesn’t care for anyone. Because Kokichi finally got him to do the one thing he hasn’t done since the trial – _feel._ Sure, he feels angry about what Kokichi said about Kaede, and annoyed that he seems to think that the killing game is fun, but at least Shuichi can now pinpoint what he’s feeling, and why.

He’s sad, he’s guilty, he’s angry, he’s annoyed, he’s confused – but he remembers how Kaede believed in him, and how she gave him her wish, and now, he’s hopeful, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick thing that I wrote! Hope you liked it. Leave a comment if you want to, I'd really appreciate it!
> 
> Title from 'Sleep on the Floor' by The Lumineers.


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